Poster advertising a 1920 performance of The Dybbuk in Warsaw
New Twists on Old Ghost Stories
Theatregoers are getting another glimpse of a rich theatrical tradition.
by Sarah Deshaies
The dybbuk is a piece of Jewish folklore, a spirit caught between the world of the material and the ephemeral. The Dybbuk is a staging of a piece of Yiddish theatrical canon caught between being a modern undertaking and a flawed technical outing. No matter the tradition, humans fear the return of spirits that can return and take over innocent souls. Catholics have possession by demonic spirits, Haitians and West Africans have voodoo, Jews have dybbuks. S.An-ski wrote The Dybbuk in Yiddish after years of researching shtetls, the small, insular Jewish communities that dotted Europe.
People usually glimpse mainstream depictions of humble shtetl life, which largely disappeared in the last century, in renderings of Fiddler on the Roof. But thanks to this staging of The Dybbuk, and the upcoming second edition of the Montreal Yiddish Theatre Festival, theatregoers are getting another glimpse of a rich theatrical tradition. (The short vignette of a dybbuk haunting preceding the Coen brothers’ A Serious Man leaps to mind.)
